Excerpt from Bookstores Industry Profile

Companies in this industry sell books from physical retail locations; they may also sell via websites. Major companies include Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, and Follett (all based in the US), as well as Fnac Darty (France), Indigo Books & Music (Canada), Kinokuniya (Japan), Page One (China), Thalia (Germany), and WHSmith (UK).

Annual sales of books worldwide are about $120 billion, according to Pricewaterhouse Coopers' Global Entertainment and Media Outlook 2015-2019. Industry growth is expected to come in large part from India, driven by the country's expanding middle class. Countries such the US, the UK, Singapore, and South Korea have high tablet penetration and will see the strongest growth in e-books' share of consumer book revenue.

The US bookstores industry includes about 7,000 establishments (single-location companies and units of multi-location companies) with combined annual revenue of about $11 billion.

Online booksellers, such as Amazon.com, are covered in the industry profile for Internet & Catalog Retailers.

COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE

The first target of the Amazon onslaught, book selling is being redefined by intense competition from online retailers, mass merchandisers, including Costco, Target, and Wal-Mart, and acceptance by consumers of digital books as an alternative to printed books. Industry consolidation and bankruptcies have left only a handful of national players. Bookstore operators have shrunk their store bases and shifted to a multichannel business model to accommodate changing consumer buying habits and migration to e-books. To compensate ...